(New Orleans)— Three distinguished Loyola University New Orleans professors are part of 11 teams of scientists soon to be awarded a share of $27.5 million in federal grants to encourage economic development and the renaissance of research in the parishes that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged.

John Snyder, J.D., Loyola music professor and Conrad N. Hilton Eminent Scholar in music industry studies, was awarded $992,278 to create an alliance to enhance the education of people interested in entering the music industry.

Maureen Shuh, Ph.D., Loyola associate professor of biology, was awarded $500,000 to support travel and research activities of students interested in cancer biology.

Patricia Dorn, Ph.D., Loyola associate professor of biology, was awarded $498,000 to develop a program to involve undergraduate students in tropical medicine research, specifically to study Chagas disease, an infectious malady that affects millions in Latin America, and increasingly is appearing in our own country.

The money comes from $10.4 billion in community-development block grants that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

The regents' panel of six non-Louisianians, most of whom are scientists, chose the 11 teams on the basis of their proposals. Among the criteria the reviewers used were the projects' potential for creating jobs, underwriting programs to train local people for these positions, attracting and retaining faculty and promising students, forming alliances among local institutions to make the best use of personnel, achieving marketable results that could result in money for the researchers and their institutions, and, eventually, help make biotechnology an important part of the local economy.

For more information about the grants, you can view the Times-Picayune article at http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/06/louisiana_scientists_could_get.html For more information on the projects, visit the regents' Web site, www.regents.state.la.us Click on "Sponsored Programs" and then click "RC/EEP Final Report."

Loyola University New Orleans is a Jesuit-Catholic institution with a total student enrollment of 4,724 including 800 law students.